Purposes

In preparing an application for the XSF to officially achieve tax-exempt status with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, we discovered today that the original certificate of incorporation defined the organization as a "business league" under Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code, rather than as an "educational, charitable and scientific organization" under Section 501(c)(3).

The reasons for the original choice of purpose are lost in the mists of time, but in any case are not consistent with the focus of the organization over the last five years on standards development. Therefore this seems like a good time to clarify the purposes of the XSF through an official amendment to the certificate of incorporation. The initial version of a proposal to do just that is located here and may be voted on by the XSF membership in the next few weeks (once it has been discussed and improved on the publicly-archived discussion list for XSF members).

Feedback is welcome as always -- use the comment form here at the blog or contact the proposal author directly via email or IM.